Lisa Moore, Emma Donoghue make Man Booker longlist

Heavyweights Martin Amis, John Banville, and Ian McEwan failed to make the cut, but Canada’s own Lisa Moore and Emma Donoghue appear on the 2010 Man Booker Prize longlist. The baker’s dozen were chosen by a jury composed of poet Andrew Motion, Financial Times literary editor Rosemary Blau, dancer, writer, and broadcaster Deborah Bull, journalist Tom Sutcliffe, and biographer and critic Frances Wilson. The longlist in full:

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Random House Canada)
Room by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins Canada)
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (Penguin)
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (McClelland & Stewart)
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)
The Long Song by Andrea Levy (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
C by Tom McCarthy (Knopf Canada)
The Thousand Autumns of Zacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Knopf Canada)
February by Lisa Moore (House of Anansi Press)
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton)
Trespass by Rose Tremain (Random House)
The Slap by Chris Tsiolkas (HarperCollins Canada)
The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner (Random House)

Of the longlisted authors, Peter Carey is one of only two people ever to have won the prize twice (the other being J.M. Coetzee), and Mitchell, Tremain, and Galgut have each been shortlisted previously. Jury chair Motion commented:

Here are thirteen exceptional novels – books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain.

The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 7 and the £50,000 prize will be awarded at a ceremony on Oct. 12.

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